The Role of Marketing Logics in the Selection of Innovations

The presented study utilizes data collected from an extensive real world concept
selection process in new product development (NPD), to investigate whether
department specific dominant logics and competences influence the selections made
by a marketing department, and what might be driving this logic. The study
specifically investigates the impact of the departmental viewpoint onto idea selection
in the innovation process, by comparing the selections made by the marketing
department (n=31) with those of R&D (n=25) and company executives (n=8). In the
NPD project seven concepts were screened for continuation through an individual
pairwise comparison, to test eight hypotheses all based on h0: There is no difference
between the innovations selected by marketing, R&D, and executive groups. Through
an analysis of the between-department variance h0 was rejected (F(12, 366)= 2.312,
p<.001), and the results from the eight following hypotheses lend support to extending
the concept of dominant logics to the department level, providing some explanations
for the large variance found in the evaluation of the three groups. The reported
findings have important managerial implications, as they point to which type of logic,
and thereby screening of ideas, can be achieved based on which departments are
involved in the critical selection of ideas and concepts for continuation in NPD.